Facebook continues to cause more divorce heartache

A survey carried out by UK divorce website www.divorce-online.co.uk in December 2009 found that 20% of behaviour petitions contained the word “Facebook.”.

A follow-up survey in December 2011 found that the number alarmingly increased during 2011 to 33% of behaviour allegations in petitions. 5000 petitions were queried as in the 2009 sample.

The most common reasons where Facebook was cited as evidence were once again relating to spouses’ behaviour with the opposite sex but also spouses using Facebook to make comments about their exes once they had separated and used their public walls as weapons in their divorce battle.

Top three reasons.

1) Inappropriate messages to members of the opposite sex.

2) Separated spouses posting nasty comments about each other.

3) Facebook friends reporting spouse’s behaviour.

Twitter only appeared in 20 petitions as part of behaviour allegations, and again it was the use of Twitter as a communication tool to make comments about exes that featured in most tweets.

Mark Keenan a spokesman for Divorce-Online said “Social networking has become the primary tool for communication and is taking over from text and e-mail in my opinion. If someone wants to have an affair or flirt with the opposite sex then the easiest place to do it. Also, the use of Facebook to make comments about ex-partners to friends has become extremely common with both sides using Facebook to vent their grievances against each other. People need to be careful what they write on their walls as the courts are seeing these posts being used in financial disputes and children cases as evidence.”